Skype mandolin lessons

[Dexterecus]

Hey everyone,

I'm a mandolin player from Belgium, and there aren't alot of mando teachers around here.

So thank god for lessons via skype, thanks to the mandolincafe I've been able to discover some world class players who offer lessons online. But the hard part now is, how to choose one? Do any of you have any experience with skype lessons?

I've currently been playing for 1 year but I feel that a teacher will really help my playing get better. So far I've just been messing around and learning a few chords.

I hardly know anything about bluegrass but I'm into gypsy swing, old-time, roots and folk/rock music. What I especially like is a more specific genre called death country/gothic americana/gothic country/alt. country/...

These are bands who play in an old-time way with dark and morbid themes. Some bands like this are 16 Horsepower, Those Poor Bastards, Reverend Glasseye and his wooden legs, Jay Munly, The Peculiar Pretzelmen, ...

So what I'm really looking for is a teacher who can help me get my mandolin playing going well and perhaps even help me with songwriting, especially in that style.

Cheers,
Tommy

[Brent Hutto]

I contacted two mandolin teachers who were offering Skype lessons and asked each of them for a 1-hour lesson. This was a few months after I first started playing mandolin so it was really a "start from the beginning" lesson that I wanted, although if I recall I did have two specific issues I wanted help with.

As it turned out, I loved both of those first lessons. Either teacher I'm sure would have been very satisfactory. Both of them were performers so I had a pretty good idea of their musical taste based on what they play on stage. So I picked the one that was absolutely a 99% match for the kind of music I wanted to play. Although the other one played stuff I like also it wasn't quite the same as my own aspirations. Maybe a 90% match instead of 99% or whatever. It really was that much of a win-win decision for me.

I also had a choice between one teacher who teaches mandolin and guitar (mostly mandolin) and the other who teaches mandolin and violin-family instruments (mostly mandolin). Since I tend to think more in a sheet music, fiddle tunes, classical-training kind of way and less in a chords and accompaniment and folk music way my choice was also a good fit from that perspective.

For what it's worth, they both had very similar suggestions (almost identical diagnosis) for the playing problems I brought up in that first lesson. And their advice helped a lot, immediately. So obviously they either both knew what they were talking about or they were both wrong in exactly the same way!;)

It's about a year later now and I'm entirely happy with my weekly half-hour Skype lessons. My only regret is I couldn't keep working with both of the folks I auditioned.

P.S. I will warn of the one significant caveat to Skype lessons. It is pretty much totally impossible to play together via Skype. When you're playing you can not hear the other person and vice versa plus there's about a 1/10 to 1/4 second delay that messes up timing. As will probably be your case my teacher is thousands of miles away and as much as I'd like a chance to play together in person once in a while it's not going to happen. Which is a bit of a letdown I suppose.

[abuteague]

Tommy,
I took mandolin lessons via Skype.
I looked at the ads for teachers on this site. http://www.mandolincafe.com/cgi-bin/instructors/instructors.cgi I went to their websites or looked for them on youtube. I looked for what their students had to say about lessons with them. I thought about it for a while and opted instead to contact a mandolin player who sounds like I want to sound in the style and genre I play in. To my astonishment, they wrote back! It turns out they give lessons, but they had not taught over Skype before. We were able to work something out and I learned a great deal.

I went into lessons with 17 years of being self taught and definite ideas of what I wanted to learn. I chose to lean toward a genre specialist who teaches instead of a teacher who plays and teaches a variety of styles. If you have 1 year experience, you may want to lean the other way and get lessons from a highly regarded teacher who is flexible on style.That way you can have a solid foundation that will serve you in any style you pursue.

Contact a few and see if you are connecting when you talk about what you want to learn. Send them some youtube links of how you want to sound. If you are brave, send them a youtube link of yourself playing too (I did this...) See what they have to say about helping you get from where you are to where you want to be.

Good luck.

[Nancyf]

Check out Academy of Bluegrass. Mike Marshall is a great teacher. There are discussions on this board about this option that you can check out. There are several Europeans in the group. For $30/month, it's a great option.